Slumber
by li'lmissnitpick
Summary: "It was the vulnerability, she supposed, the utter bonelessness of slumber that made even the most firm-jawed, pragmatic face look slack and easy." Juliet muses about a sleeping Shawn. Shawn muses right back.
1. Youth

**Consider this story disclaimed. **

She'd always thought that people were supposed to look younger when they slept.

Juliet knew it was trite, and nothing at all that a female detective on the rise within the Santa Barbara police department ought to dwell on of a morning. It was those dreadful romance novels, those so-called dime-store paperbacks that she'd inhaled as a teenager, though there had never been any item there—at least in her memory—that could be purchased for a dime. But she had happily handed over her babysitting money, her tips and her hard-earned pay to escape to a world where the careworn, dashing hero with the flinty eyes shed his wild ways for the pretty, but by no means beautiful girl with a plucky spirit. In those stories, there was always a tender scene, after retreating chastely to separate bedrolls—or after tearing up the sheets with reckless abandon—in which the beguiling heroine mused upon the innocence and boyishness of her dangerous slumbering rogue.

She knew it was trite, but regardless, the scene had stuck with her, and she had grown to anticipate the moments following sex for the warmth and the wonder that it evoked. She had had more than a few men in her life, and several who had shared her bed. Naturally some stuck around for longer than others. Some were more handsome or better in bed or more sensitive to her feelings or what have you, but they all had this one thing in common—they all looked younger in sleep.

It was the vulnerability, she supposed, the utter bonelessness of slumber that made even the most firm-jawed, pragmatic face look slack and easy. Perhaps it was that sleep erased the telltale lines around the eyes and smoothed the furrows in the brow that were donned each morning somewhere between tooth-brushing and shoe-tying. Maybe it was the way the moonlight always seemed to soften rough edges and hide minute flaws, transforming angles and edges into smooth planes and gentle slopes; shadow and substance melded together in a land where impression rules supreme.

She had often lain awake at night, her mind racing with the cares of the day even while her body hummed pleasantly after shared intimacy with an engaging companion. She had never been one to quickly fall asleep, even after passion's fire left her limp and listless. So she would wait, encircled by a masculine arm, pressed to a lean side, cradled against a broad chest, until her lover tired and slept. For several moments she would lie utterly still, counting heartbeats, measuring breaths, before slowly drawing away and out of her lover's arms.

There, in the half-light creeping in from beneath hastily drawn draperies, she would lean back and casually explore the sleep-softened lines of her lover's face. She would tilt her head a bit, prop herself up with a forearm, striving to see and to know, to read each blemish and imperfection like a case file, to gather evidence, to consider, to judge.

_He looks so young_, she invariably thought, so _very young and easy in sleep. This is what he looked like years ago. This is the man, stripped of the anxieties and stresses of life. This was him. This was his past. _And with acknowledgement came the questions. _Who was he when he wore this innocent face? How has he become the man he is?_

The questions were, to her, a completely rational exercise. Her grandfather, full of useful wisdom as well as those snappy proverbs and adages endemic to his generation, had been known to say that, to get where you're going, you have to know where you've been—and that went double for any passengers picked up along the way. So she squinted and she studied and she read the past as a roadmap to the future.

It did not escape her notice that, with Shawn, she never wondered.

It wasn't because so much of his life was known to her—through Gus, through Henry, sometimes even through Shawn himself, though it was always difficult to tell where truth ended and pain-shrouding humour began. It wasn't even because she loved him too much—or not enough—to speculate as to the whys and the hows and the heretofores.

It was his face in the moonlight as he slept sprawled across the sheets, naked and exhausted.

Shawn was the only man she'd ever known whose face was never really softened by the hands of sleep. He looked older—no. No, that wasn't right. He didn't look older, at least, not in the physical sense. There were no stark hollows or fine lines brought out in relief by the fading light. He looked almost as he ever did in daylight, though without the boyish grin or the adolescent smirk. No, in sleep he looked more mature, more serious, more dependable—though she scoffed at applying any of those labels to the shit-eating grin of his hyperactive waking self.

For several nights towards the beginning of their burgeoning relationship, while intimacy was still new and shocking and wonderful and puzzling all at once, she had lain awake, holding onto one of his smooth, gentle hands even while she tenderly extracted herself from his grasp (Shawn was, as expected, a cuddler). She gazed upon his sweet, handsome face and tried to conjure some measure of the curiosity she had always experienced while beholding her slumbering lover.

The desire to see and to know was still there. She still wanted to peek into his soul, but more, she wanted him to bare it. She still wanted to catch a glimpse of his thoughts, but more, she wanted him to share them, freely and honestly. She no longer wished to read each blemish like a case file, to gather evidence, to consider, to judge. She wanted to experience each new line and each new scar, to be there to laugh at them, to cry over them, to dote and fuss and kiss them all, each and every one.

No, Shawn, unique as always, did not look younger when he slept. She accepted this observation with unexpected equanimity.

Of course she had never stayed with the other men before him, the men whose youthful slumber compelled her to always look to the past. When she looked at Shawn in the dark hours just before dawn, she saw her future.

**A/N: Hello everyone. After an extremely long hiatus, I'm finally bestirred myself to write a short little piece of psychological cotton candy. Not sure how out of touch I am, but it's been nice to escape the demands of work and do something frivolous. I might be a little rusty, but it's been a short, sweet ride. **

**As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading, **

**l'ilmissnitpick**


	2. The Gift

**Consider this story disclaimed.**

He knew that she watched him as he slept. He was Shawn Spencer, renowned psychic detective for the Santa Barbara Police Department—how could he not know?

In the night, as he drifted between wakefulness and sleep, he could practically feel those gorgeous blue eyes of hers tracing his features, greedily soaking up every imaginary wrinkle, every hypothetical imperfection. He knew that she waited until he was heavy and motionless with sleep, all drained and warm after their fiery passion was banked for the night. He knew that she would lie silently in his arms until she thought he was asleep before gently disentangling their entwined limbs and extricating herself from his grasp. He knew that she studied him, dissected him, treated the lines and angles of his face like a case she couldn't quite solve. It struck him, perhaps inanely, that this metaphor was one that she would use, and he mentally shook himself for such presumption even while he congratulated himself for having the perception to glean even the smallest understanding of the inner workings of her fantastic and bewildering mind. Nonetheless, he knew she watched him, and he said nothing.

He was, after all, excellent at keeping secrets. Especially from her.

The first time he noticed her watching him had been an accident. He had awoken inexplicably one night, several weeks after they had first taken up the physical aspect of their relationship. Sex with Juliet was no longer a novelty at that point, and they had passed that phase in which intimacy was a stunning though (yes, occasionally) clumsy culmination of the years and years of mental foreplay. By this time, their unique bond had begun to morph into a brilliant, comfortable, and by no means dull or predictable, _adult _relationship. Shawn could admit to himself that it wasn't just the sex that had kept them so enthralled with each other even when the newness was gone—although the sex was pretty damn good. It was the discovery, the companionship, the passion and strangely the _safety_ of the two of them together. He slept better than he ever had in his life with Juliet snuggled in his arms.

He couldn't quite say what it was that had awakened him that particular night—perhaps it was her tentative movements, so at odds with the lazy, heavy motions of a sleeping woman. Or maybe it was the sudden loss of her body heat, which he had come to appreciate and even bask in of a morning. Maybe it was a shift in the mystical jujumagumbo in the general vicinity of the bed. In the end, he suspected that it was a combination of his father's tutelage (which had made him a light sleeper, though by no means an indifferent one) and the simple fact that, subconsciously, he _missed_ Juliet when she wasn't in his arms.

His inner child—the one who still ruled the majority of his waking actions and remarks—rolled its eyes at such a _wussy_ statement. But the other side of Shawn, the secret one, the one manifested in the kind, gentle and increasingly (alarmingly?) reliable man who was beginning to emerge, was strangely at peace. This man, this Serious Shawn—who considered ditching his beloved motorcycle in favour of a car that he could use to take his girlfriend out for a night that did not include shocking cold, bug guards or frantic hair resuscitation (on both their parts) in the washroom of whichever restaurant, bowling alley, hell, even shooting range, that they had frequented on their ultra-hush-hush dates—this man was afforded a little more pull. Truth was, Serious Shawn Moments were becoming regular occurrences, and that scared him.

So he slumbered on, saying nothing about Juliet's propensity for nocturnal observations—as an homage to the immature Shawn he had shown the world for decades, and as an innate defence mechanism. He wasn't so certain of what it was that Juliet was thinking when her eyes caressed his features by the dim glow of the moon or by the harsher light of the streetlights streaming through the curtains. Until he was, he wasn't willing to risk voicing his thoughts. His inventive mind came up with all sorts of scenarios—regret, disappointment, devastation, a growing, as-yet-unnoticed-but-increasingly-disfiguring mole—but he couldn't bring himself to ask her. Not yet.

He couldn't even bring himself to talk to Gus about it. Gus, who was beginning to give him funny looks, clearly sensing that something was bothering Shawn. But this confusion regarding Juliet was yet another thing that Shawn chose to keep quiet. Gus was his best friend and lord knows Shawn would kill for him, die for him, and even help him hide any bodies necessary over the course of a long and neurotic life, but ingrained habits are hard to break, and Shawn had never been the type to share his feelings even when he _could_ verbalize them without sounding like an pathetic love-sick idiot.

So he slumbered on—or so Juliet thought—seemingly unconcerned with the innocuous gaze of his girlfriend.

What she didn't know is that he watched her, too. While she gazed quietly at his (her beloved's?) face, he traced her features with his mind's eye, charting the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, the impudent, upturned, pert little nose and the generous ridge of her soft and supple lips. But for him it was not a study, not a calm dissection. There was no analysis, no desire for knowledge or insight or understanding. He did not approach her face as a riddle or a puzzle.

For Shawn, whose life for the past several years had been dedicated to perception and deduction and yes, a hint of intuition, her face was a haven and a home. Hers was not a face for impersonal observation, but rather one for reverence.

So he slumbered on, watching her watching him. And though he still didn't know what she was thinking and likely never would, he gradually felt the warmth and affection and pure, unadulterated love of her gaze.

Suddenly, her secret was no longer a burden but a gift.

**A/N: Almost as soon as I had posted Juliet's perspective, the line "He knew that she watched him as he slept" insinuated itself squarely into my mind and teased the corners of it until I could write it down. Shawn's perspective here is like nothing he would ever say, but who's to say how he thinks? I imagine his mind is full of asides and interruptions, but mostly, I imagine that he's a lot more serious and sensitive and insecure than we give him credit for under all of that drama. I wanted to show that serious, sensitive, insecure side a little bit, give us a glimpse of a Shawn who doesn't use his humour to mask vulnerability. **

**But mostly, I was just in the mood for a little more psychological cotton candy.**

**Thanks to everyone who took the time to tell me what they thought. I can't deny that it's uplifting to hear feedback from interested readers.**

**Thanks,**

**L'ilmissnitpick**


	3. Dreams

**Though I've dutifully followed the practice like the most tractable of sheep, I've never quite understood the compulsive need to disclaim one's fan fictions. A few words of self-flagellation, the requisite avowal of poverty and pleas for transactional immunity, not to mention hyperbolic author praise ain't gonna do squat to make fan fiction anything less plagiaristic. But hell, for convention's sake, consider this story disclaimed.**

He slept like the dead, usually.

It was endearing, she supposed, the way Shawn collapsed into the boneless sprawl of slumber like a child down from a sugar high. He would lie there, perfectly still save for the slow rise and fall of his chest, breathing quietly, with small puffs of air escaping his barely parted lips. Sometimes his breath would gently stir the hair on the back of her neck, or brush across her cheek like the barest of caresses. Instead of irritating her, Juliet found it comforting, knowing that her lover lay under the same sheets that covered her, that his warmth crept over toward her side of the bed even on the coldest of nights. And it was reassuring to feel his breath, his life, ghosting across her cheek when her own troubled dreams woke her and she needed to remind herself that he was alright, that they were alright, and that whichever criminal or psychopath disturbed her equanimity had been caught and brought to justice.

Sometimes, after a long day that left him particularly tired and stressed and jittery with concealing it from everyone, after he had retreated behind a mask of off-beat humour and pineapple smoothies, and promised with a tight, slightly manic smile that he would talk to her about whatever it was that was bothering him—not yet but soon—sometimes he talked in his sleep.

He rarely said anything of much interest. Mostly he mumbled random, illogical sentences with no possible connection except in the mind of a deranged lunatic or Shawn Spencer. An improbable number of the late-night snatches of one-sided conversation were snippets of arcane '80s movies or pleas for pineapple-flavoured food items. The occasional smart-ass remark and mumbled "Lassie" wasn't hard to interpret, especially since it mostly occurred after the gruff detective had faced some kind of brush with death. It was obvious that Shawn counted Lassiter as a friend, and it didn't take much of a stretch to realize that Shawn's jokes were a little brother's attempt to get the elder's attention and, in the twisted way that only made sense to children, to earn his approbation. Juliet might have teased Shawn and Carlton about it had she not been so certain that it would cause more discomfort than amusement for all involved.

Juliet also knew that Shawn dreamed about her. After the Yin case, she found herself blushing hotly in the dark of night as she woke to a low, sexy groan and a sleep-roughened voice growling her name. She had ignored it then, in an effort to save them both a little embarrassment. But familiarity bred confidence, and after a particularly tough case which found her a little scraped up but none the worse for the wear, she listened to his urgent sounds of distress over he safety turn into sighs and deep moans, and woke him up, reminding him that dreams were all well and good, but reality kicked ass, too.

Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of him in the morning, his tired face bearing the damning evidence of his lack of sleep. She would tell him that he'd dreamed, her intonation mounting at the end, making the statement a gentle, undemanding question—an oblique reference to his earlier reticence and a subtle plea to share that small bit of himself that he had—however unconsciously—walled off and pushed aside.

It wasn't as if she hoped that his dreams would offer some stunning insight into his psyche. She did not believe that the secret to Shawn Spencer could be found in the pop-culture references and indecipherable babble or even mumbled insults or steamy, life-affirming sex. But the desire to share all and to know all was strong, and she could not control her lips, from which spilled each anxious question, nor her eyes, which silently begged for the intimacy of shared, diminished pain.

He might blurt out every superficial thought that entered his mind, but the deep stuff—the good stuff—he kept hidden away. He tried, God bless him, though she knew that he found it difficult to open up on a more intimate emotional level. His childhood hadn't prepared him for any measure of emotional maturity, but his relationship with Henry was improving, despite the skeletons in _that_ closet. She knew that, though he still had difficulty relating to his mother, he made an effort to contact her after her abduction at the hands of Yang, calling once in a while in an awkward but well-meaning attempt to see how she was doing. Shawn's attempts at sharing his deeper feelings—what he called his Serious Shawn Moments—were becoming more frequent, she'd noticed, and as they did, she felt her heart nestle just a bit closer to his.

Lately, Juliet thought that she had made progress when it came to getting him to talk about the dreams. Or maybe he was the one making progress—she wasn't quite clear on who was supposed to be progressing in this particular campaign. But still she asked, in her non-interrogatory way, about the dreams.

Occasionally, Shawn would tell her fantastical tales of his slumbering adventures: flying through the air on giant black wings; acting as an elite spy, saving the free world from impending calamity; conversing with sentient pineapples. Often he would smile that abashed, crooked smile of his and tell her with impressive innocence that he could not remember what he had dreamed.

But sometimes he would look at her, really look at her, with those wide, clear eyes of his—those eyes that always managed to be just a bit bewitching, given the proper lighting and of course, provided that the mood struck him. He would start talking, about nothing and everything, really, his regular surface chatter interspersed with fleeting glimpses of the man beneath. He would confide in her, between a rundown of the best pancake restaurants in the greater Santa Barbara area and a diatribe railing against Gus' refusal to let Shawn borrow the Blueberry. A few sentences here and there, a glimpse of the fears and hopes and dreams of the man who was slowly but surely becoming almost as indispensable to her as a limb.

He would take her hand—shyly, still, as if afraid she wouldn't want to touch him if he exposed his ugly side—and tell her that sometimes, after a case was over and everyone had gone home, once the bad guys had all been caught and justice done, sometimes it would hit him that life was not a game, that theirs was an important job and a precarious one, and that the woman he loved had a dangerous job and that there were no guarantees in life. And he would smile, a little sadly, perhaps, and tell her that he would be fine, as long as he was with her.

She felt closest to him in those moments, when their separate fears collided, when their confessions mirrored not one but two souls. She would reach for his hand and gently twine their fingers together while their shared anxieties eased with the telling and their tangled fingers coalesced into a symbol of the intimate interrelation of their minds and hearts.

**A/N: I'm not quite sure what this is or where it come from, but the theme of slumber just won't leave my brain. A few other ideas are still rattling about, which I suppose I will post when time and inclination allow me to write them.**

**I think it's clear based on my lackadaisical posting and general discomfort with the whole process that I'm not a writer, but a reader. I am a very _good_ reader, actually, which is why it's clear to me that my little ramblings are somewhat lacking. But the comments that you have all given me here are so kind and thoughtful that I am truly humbled and appreciative, and it makes me want to write just a little more! Thanks again, everyone.**

**Cheers,**

**L'ilmissnitpick**


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